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Sequestration: So You Say You Want Cooperation

We had achieved the ultimate dream of bi-partisanship. Republicans and Democrats worked together with one goal in mind. They labored mightily and ultimately succeeded in creating a monster called “Sequestration.” They set out to make a Frankenstein’s monster or a Golem–something big, powerful, stupid and soulless. Congratulations. It worked. This is the fruit of their cooperation. If they continuously fail in creating good, efficient and wise policies and programs, at least we know that when they work to create horrible programs, they succeed.

Sequestration is not even the result of the Law of Unintended Consequences. This was intended to be something so repellant that they would be forced to cooperate again, but this time to kill their creation. But like so many monsters, they have lost control, and now Sequestration stalks the land, threatening to cut with a meat cleaver, and with no reason or rationale, our military and social programs.

Let’s go back to the lab and see how this monster was put together and why. That lab is, naturally, Congress. Not being able to agree on how sensibly to cut the budget, with Republicans believing that every penny or hundred billion dollar military authorization was sacred, and Democrats believing that every social program and entitlement was equally sacrosanct, they stitched together this monster who wields a meat axe. If we just mindlessly lop off ten percent of everything, without any regard for value or efficacy, it would be so crazy, so irrational, and so harmful to social programs, the military and the economy that we couldn’t possibly allow it. We’d have to come together and do something smart and thoughtful. Right.

When the date approached that the monster would come to life, they all panicked and put it off till the beginning of next month. They promised themselves that they could not let this thing loose in the land. They promised themselves that because they had succeeded so well in making the monster, they could also succeed in stopping it from ravaging the land–and the economy. They reasoned that if they could make such a horror in the first place, they could keep it caged. They lied to themselves.

Now as this rough beast comes round and slouches to DC to be born, some are telling themselves that it won’t really be so bad. Maybe, they rationalize, we can fix it and tame it postpartum, like when we look at the next fiscal crisis and hope it doesn’t make the horrible destructive mess that it was designed to make. Ah, the folly.

If this is what is (mis) begotten by cooperation, please let’s go back to the partisan barricades. Sometimes stasis is better than stupidity.